


We Will Never Save The World: Firefly

by alexiel_neesan



Series: We Will Never Save The World [4]
Category: DCU, Firefly
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, Jayne's Hat, M/M, Panic Attack, Tim is Riverified, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Jason had found himself saying 'shit happens' a lot, here. More and more as time passed, as a matter of fact, in this strange universe that didn't know about aliens and heroes.</em></p><p>Takes place some time after the movie Serenity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Will Never Save The World: Firefly

II.

Mal's progression through Serenity could be tracked by the level of the mangled chinese yelled, the little mechanic's voice in counterpoint to his.

They were in the mess room, Tim seated at the heavy table, Jason circling the room. It was no-one's fault some crucial part of the engine which name Jason had not caught had died on them. It was no-one's fault that they were broke, one more time, and that coins were rare. It was no-one's fault that they were stranded on this piss-poor ball of dirt trying to pretend it was a moon. It was no-one's fault the easiest way out of this shit would be accepting to take on a ridiculously dangerous contract with people they really, really should not be thinking about working with, but with a lot of money to spare, more than Serenity would really need. The actual contract would only involve Jason, but he would need a shuttle and a pilot (and almost certainly a medic, but he tried to not think too much about that) and he was fully aware everything would fall back on the whole of Serenity in case of cluster-fuck. It was Mal's decision to take, in the end. Shit happened.

Jason had found himself saying 'shit happens' a lot, here. More and more as time passed, as a matter of fact. Tim was staring at the top of the table, following a line in the wood with a finger, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He had been running in the corridors with River earlier, before she had went into town with Inara. It had seemed to help, his eyes not as wide and blank as when Jason had woken up earlier to find him staring at the walls.

Shit happened. It did not stop Jason from wanting to kill dead men.

"Where's everyone?" was the first thing Mal asked when he got into the mess room. Kaylee stepped in behind him, trying to wipe her hands on a rag as dirty as her fingers. Jason stopped pacing and turned to face them. Tim did not react, to anything, his finger still on the line in the wood.

"Zoë, Jayne and Simon are still on the supply run, and Inara and River went into town about a half-hour ago, Cap'," answered Jason.

More mangled chinese, but Jay did not need to know it to get the gist of the tirade. Kaylee gave up on cleaning her hands after the second goat insult hurled at the universe and turned back to the bowels of the ship. He had no doubt she was going back to her engine, working her magic on it. If there was a way to make it work around the broken parts, she would find it.

Mal headed to the cockpit. Jason glanced at Tim –he was still at the table, his eyes unfocused on the rough top, the one finger still moving. Jason swallowed and kept an eye on him, until he could not see the teenager anymore. He went after Mal. He found him clicking through the cortex console, in the cockpit.

"Captain," Jason began, his voice carefully neutral and his hands gripping the top of the doorway. Mal glanced at him; Jason continued. "You just have to give the word." Maybe there was a way to keep Serenity out of it, maybe he could do it all on his own –Tim would have known, before, would have made a plan out of thin air and ashes, one better than what Jason could think about right now.

Mal returned to the console. He rubbed at his eyes jerkily. "I'm keeping it in mind, okay? We need the rest of the crew to get to a decision." He did not look back at Jason. "Go back to your brother."

Shit happened.

*  
 _I._

 _He wakes up with a gasp and a scream dancing on his lips –but there is no suit, no coffin this time. Everything is blindingly white. His wrists and ankles are tied to the bed he is laying on, solidly so._

 _It is not enough to keep him there._

 _The corridor outside the room is white too, and empty. There is no indication of where this is, of what have happened –he had been in Gotham, on a roof, with Drake-Wayne-whatever. Then?_

 _Then nothing. Then here._

 _*_

 _He finds Tim after two months. He had not been looking for him, did not even knew Tim was there too._

 _Jason has been looking for every piece of information he could get his hands on, once he got out. Getting out had been easy. The technology and the multi-planets thing had been cause for a serious pause, but he had done the traveling through worlds thing once already._

 _This facility had looked promising. He had used the state of near panic, caused by some news or another, to slip inside. He had found records of tests and things that used the same denomination codes he had found in the facility he had woke up in –the codes only differed by a few numbers, though. It had been enough for him to take a quick look around._

 _Tim's eyes are wide open, and are staring at nothing. He is strapped to a chair, and linked to so many machines, and there is something on his skull. His head is shaved._

 _Jason considers leaving him there._

 _*_

 _Tim does not talk. Or move on his own –only at first though, thank the multiverse for that. Or make any other kind of gesture that could indicate he is still there. He eats when Jason puts food in front of him, he washes when Jason got enough coins from his last job to go to the bath house and pushes him under a spray of water, he pees when Jason does, he sleeps only if Jason is in the same room, on the same makeshift bed._

 _It freaks Jason out, more often than not, and in his nightmares he is in the streets of Gotham again, an empty shell like Tim seems to be now. Tim's hair has grown a bit since, not enough, and there are additional white lines of scars on the already scarred body._

 _Jason does not know what happened to Tim –the few papers he grabbed and understood at the time talked about 'experiment' and 'non-human body/alien?" and no, really, what the fuck? Tim and he are pretty damn human, not even metas._

 _Maybe they are aliens for this universe in the stars who never knew about aliens and heroes, this universe whose exit he can not find._

 _*_

 _He hears about the ship on a job. The name is almost hushed, and when he grabs it, the rumors in the bars are almost blown out of proportion. This crew found the real reason the war started, this crew flew to the edges of the Black and back, this crew hosts a killing machine, you know, the ones they make out of genius kids, they make them disappear, and they never resurface to the sun again, this crew flew among Reavers, this crew got all its contacts killed, they are cursed, they will take any job now, this crew has one of the best doctor this side of Ariel._

 _When he asks more, he's answered that the doc got his sister out of the Academy, she was one of those genius kids they break and it's a conspiracy man, you hear? They rummage in their brain and they make them into supersoldiers, y'know? The kids can't even recognize their own parents. But he got her and she's almost back to normal now._

 _He picks on the last rumor and holds it close._

 _*_

 _They are easy to spot in the crowd. Or maybe he's all too used to surveillance work._

 _The bar is loud and crowded, bright lights at the counter and darker nooks to drink in and talk quietly, large screens showing advertisements and video clips in half a dozen languages. There are people in brightly colored clothes, opened fans in their hands, dancing slowly between the tables, there are heads talking shops, there are all kinds of people looking for the answers to the universe in the bottom of their glass._

 _His objective is seated around one of the tables in the back._

 _Tim is at his back, his eyes staring at nothing, silent, moving when Jason moves. Stealing a ride in one of the inter-planetary shuttles had been easy. Getting the coordinates of the ship's latest docking and where she would be next had been only a bit more complicated, once he had found the right people to ask, the right questions, the right incentives._

 _Jason is direct. He asks for a ride from here to some other moon, and to hire their medic, doesn't give names. He doesn't sit at the table, doesn't pretend the big man and the woman on either side of the guy who is clearly the captain are not pointing some sort of weapons at him even if guns have to be locked at the entrance. Jayne Cobb, Zoë Alleyne Washburne, Mal Reynolds. He did his research. He insists he has coins –and he has them, enough of them for the things he asks for, money bathed in blood; he did what he had to do, he'd do it again if he had to. He probably will have to, at some point._

 _He doesn't hear the girl walking up to them –he nearly barks at her to stay away from Tim, Tim who is looking up at her with blank eyes. But she speaks, and he shuts up._

 _"He's screaming, inside. He's always screaming." She raises a hand to touch Tim, and Jason wraps an arm around the younger man's shoulders, drags him closer, out of reach. The girl keeps her hand up in the air, still staring at Tim's vacant eyes. "They did to him what they did to me."_

 _Jason only then realizes there's another man who came up with the girl, and he's talking with the captain._

 _They accept his money. They don't promise miracles._

 _*_

 _Simon seems fascinated with their blood work. Jason doesn't see how that is supposed to help Tim, but he's not the medic on board._

 _"Where are you from?" Simon asks. The infirmary looks blue._

 _"Not from around here," answers Jason._

 _"Mister Todd, you and your brother's DNAs present alterations-"_

 _"It's Jason."_

 _"Jason, then. You both possess alterations and markers I had never seen before, I'll need to know more and use you as a baseline to even think of begining tailoring a course of treatment for Tim–"_

 _"We're not from around here," repeats Jason, and he rubs his eyes. "They thought we were aliens."_

 _River passes before the infirmary's door, Tim on her heels, eyes wide. They've been here three days and already Jason thinks River is better for Tim than he is –she dragged him all around the corridors and back accesses, made him climb the cargo bay, tried, with little success, to make him play tag with her and Kaylee. And Tim is reacting. Acting independently._

 _"She says that... he's not screaming when he's near you." Simon follows Jay's line of sight, follows his thoughts too, apparently._

 _What is there to answer to that?_

 _*_

 _Jason has a healthy dose of respect and fear for Zoë. Under other circumstances, other times, he would have tried to pursue her. Thinking about it makes him shakes his head and wonders what had happened to the previous him. He certainly wouldn't have been here, sitting on the ramp cleaning his guns while keeping an eye on Tim, who was looking, without really seeing it, Kaylee tweaking at the mule under the hot sun of the planet; sitting and waiting for the captain to come back with news and maybe jobs._

 _The money had gone fast –but he couldn't leave, they couldn't leave, not now, not so soon. So he more or less sold himself to Mal and to Serenity to be able to have a ship around them and for Simon to keep working with Tim –Jason's skills are a rarity, even in the black. Plenty of people can kill, and steal, but he's better than any of them, can do more._

 _His former self would have hated that. Former self only had himself to care about. Tim's hair is longer, hides all the scars now. He got some weight back on, some muscles, but he looks younger and thinner than he should and has any right to be. He's acting a bit more independently, but he stays in sight of Jason or River most of the time._

 _Someone walks on the ramp, down from the ship –Zoë's footsteps._

 _"Jason," she says, and he puts the firearm he's cleaning down in front of him, looks up at her._

 _"Yes ma'am?" he answers, and she keeps climbing down the ramp, motioning for him to follow her. He wraps his stuff and reassembles his guns between a blink and the next, follows Zoë around the ship –Kaylee catches his eye at some point, before they're out of sight, and nods. She'll keep an eye on Tim._

 _"I know you're ready to do anything for Tim, and that includes loyalty to us as long as Simon's needed." It's not a question. He stares at her. "I need to know what you can do," she finishes. There's a makeshift range there._

 _He makes sure Zoë'll know he'll hit anything he targets._

 _*_

 _There's a job, at some point. There has been several others jobs, and passengers that one time –with the passengers, Jason made Tim stay in their bunk, distracted him with wooden puzzles. They have several puzzles; he brought them on a market on a whim. There are two in different shades of woods, complicated ones: one's a ball you can take apart and reform, but putting it back together is tricky, the other's a triangle on the same model. Then there's a blocky one, brightly colored, clearly made for kids and toddlers. The last one works better to distract Tim._

 _This job's a rather good job, well paid, with little chances to be shot at. They just have to retrieve the cargo of a ship who died out in the Black –malfunction due to age and ill-care, from the specs they were able to gather. Kaylee cursed a streak at the ship's mechanic when she saw them._

 _The closer they get to the coordinates, the more distracted River gets, babbling about ghosts in the black and looking at things only she can see, until she can't do the flying anymore. Zoë takes her place. That means Jason will have to replace her and follow Mal and Jayne into the other ship, and use a space suit. Tim gets increasingly agitated, too –agitated for Tim, at least. He trails Jason to the airlock, stares at a point above Jay's shoulder when the three men suit up and verify each other's suit. Jason thinks Tim leaves to find River once they're in the airlock; and then he concentrates on the job._

 _Space is silent. Being in a space suit is not. He can hear his breathing, too loud, the cracks of the articulation joints, the quiet and repetitive 'whoosh' sound of the air, the crackling of the radios._

 _" <Everything all right in there?>" asks Mal. They're around the door they choose as access, gripping at the rails around it. If Jason turns around and follows the cable fixed at his belt, he'll see Serenity behind, Serenity and the vast nothingness of space. So he doesn't._

 _" <Yeah>" he says. Jayne just opens the door in answer._

 _They quickly realize that there's still some air inside –the airlock is still functioning. The gravity is fucked though, everything is floating around, bumping with soft noises from time to time. 'Everything' includes the corpses of the crew. They are mummified, dried from the inside out. Jason follows Jayne and Mal in the corridor, but it seems to him that every empty socket is tracking his progress, is following him._

 _He hears his breathing getting louder._

 _" <I found it!>" Calls Jayne, and Jason can hear Mal acknowledging that and going closer to the other man. Jason can only think of the space he's in, can only think that this ship is a coffin –a graveyard– in the middle of nowhere._

 _" <...on? Jason!>" Mal is calling. It's not the first time. Jason doesn't have enough air. Again. Not again._

 _Maybe he does say he needs to go back to the ship. Maybe he remembers to grip and follow the cable he's attached to._

 _The airlock of Serenity is too small, and the suit is pressing him everywhere –he can't breathe, can't breathe. He falls to his knees in the corridor when the door finally opens, and he can't get the helmet off fast enough, can't breathe enough. His hands are numb, and it takes him two breathes –too long, too long– to realize he's shaking, he's too cold, he doesn't know where he is, who is there –_ I can't die. I can't die again _. He thinks that maybe he's having a flashback, and no, no, he's doing fine, he's doing just fine, he can't blackout now, he can't have a flashback now!_

 _He's still clawing at his clothes_ –wasn't there a space suit? Where... _– clawing shakily at the damp neck of his shirt, trying to get out, trying to breathe._

 _There is something, something touching him –he tries to get away but the touches go from tentative to determined, and follows him. Then sounds, quiet, low sounds, like whimpers, like a little animal muzzling at him. Jason stays still only an instant but it's enough for the touches to get bolder, to have arms? Arms wrap around him. The whimpers don't stop._

 _Jason blinks, sluggishly, blood roaring in his ears, feeling like he got beaten black and blue, his head spinning. The arms are loosely around his shoulders, the hands moving up and down slowly, and he's sitting on the floor, his back in a corner. Tim. It's Tim holding him, Tim with his head in the crook of Jason's neck, Tim whimpering –and when is the last time he made any sort of noise?_

 _There's Simon too, crouching with his hands up before him –there's a syringe catching the light in one hand. Jason flinches when Simon gets closer –and he realizes the doc's been talking, probably since Jason came in from the airlock._

 _"Jason? Are you with me? You're having a panic attack."_

 _"Don't sedate me," is the first thing Jason says –and his mouth, there's saliva at the corners and has he been babbling?_

 _"Okay. Okay." The syringe is put down carefully on the floor. "You need to breathe. Jason. I went to 8 years of medical school... I've read thousands of medical journal articles... and there has never been a documented account of someone dying of a panic attack, Jason." He's been babbling._

 _Tim. Tim's there, solid next to him, solid under his hand, solid and warm and alive. Jason clings to him, tries to slow his breathing –Tim's hair is right next to his nose, smelling like dust and metal under the smell of the same shampoo they all use._

 _"It felt– it felt too much like..."_

 _"No. Panic attack. Most probably triggered by claustrophobia. Takes deep breaths." Simon gets closer again. Jason tries to flinch, but he's shaking too badly for that. He grabs at Tim, makes a fist into his too large sweater. Tim keeps whimpering and crooning, making small circles with his hands. Jason can't catch his eyes, can't make him look up._

 _Tim's doing what Jason does to him when the younger man is having a nightmare. Is it progress? Simon is still talking, but Jason's not listening anymore._

 _He puts his head against Tim's and close his eyes._

 _*_

 _Jayne drags Jason back to the ship –the space port. Air port? Just port? Whatever it is. It's never quiet, never empty. There're enough light to make you believe it's day, and not some impossible hour of the morning. It's like Las Vegas, but in space. Jason says so, dragging on "space" until it only sounds like a long suit of "aaaaaaaaa"-s, and giggles in Jayne's shoulder, then chuckles. Giggles are for girls and seriously intoxicated Jasons. Which he's not. No sir._

 _"Next time we do that, I'll make sure you can stand on your own," Jayne grumbles. They are nearly matched in size and weight, dragging Jason must not be very easy. Jason laughs again and pulls on the braids of Jayne's terribly ugly hat that he's currently wearing. It's ugly and fun and Jason hasn't allowed himself to be this smash faced drunk in... forever, really. That he got drunk for free and won a couple hundred bucks in the process is all for the better. That had been a close call –two more drinks and he was rolling down under the table. Maybe he's already rolling. Everything spins in pretty, pretty streaks of lights._

 _"Āiyā! C'mon move you gorram asshole," and that might be Jayne dragging him up the ramp to get into Serenity. And ooops, everyone's already awake._

 _"Heeey, I won us a hundred bucks! And another!" Jason grins, wide and wet, spreads his arms –nearly slaps Jayne's head off._

 _"And how many brain cells you got left?" Kaylee shots back immediately. Zoë seems to sigh and leave. Simon's not there. He can't see River –and she's good, he can't imagine how good she'd have been with some training and how brilliant she'd have been in Gotham._

 _"He-ey, you should be thanking me," he pouts. Kaylee rolls her eyes. Mal facepalms and ouch, that looked like it had hurt. Captain says something about riots and they're no good for Serenity and I could care less how you kill yourself. That's harsh, he pouts some more. He got them all money! They should be happy._

 _There is Tim, half hiding in a doorway and– he's staring at Jason. He's barefoot and looks like he didn't sleep; the reason of why is that is all too easy to answer. Jason feels like he lost the last ten shots of liquor straight out of his bloodstream. He should have been here. Tim doesn't sleep when he's not around._

 _"Hi Timbo." He tries to hug him, but Tim whimpers and– and he's more interested in Jayne's ugly fun hat on Jason's head than in Jason. Jason takes it off and put it on Tim's dark hair, despite the younger boy's protesting whimpers. Then he drags them to bed._

 _The next morning he wants to kill his past self who got so fucking drunk. Tim is still wearing Jayne's ugly hat._

 _*_

 _  
Every time he walks in, Jason thinks he's going to meet the genie of the bottle. It smells of incense, and tea, and perfume, but not in the way that brought back bad memories of other genies, of sweat and blood and unresponsiveness. This one is cozy and pillows and warm draperies and strength under smiles and Tim has his head on her legs, being petted. Inara is humming something. Jason stays in the doorway, not quite hidden from the shuttle's occupants' sight, not quite obvious either. Tim is…_

 _Simon says he's not sure he can make more progress, Simon says Tim's brain and perceptions have literally been blown open, Simon says–_

 _Some days, Tim makes whimpers of sounds and tugs at Jason's hand and plays with River. Some days he stares at the walls and doesn't react, follows Jason's incentives to eat, has to be pushed inside the shower and kept upright under the water and. Jason's angry, always have been and always will be, but he's tired. He's so tired and he has been dreaming about the cof– about that almost every night for more than a month. Tim reacted to that, too, tiny –there're not tiny, they just feel that way, one more measure of helpless and not the way if should be– tiny arms and thin hands trying to anchor him at night, almost silent whimpers in Jay's ears._

 _Jason closes his eyes and leans further in the doorway._

 _River at his elbow makes him startle. She looks up with those huge eyes of her, knowing and old in her face. "He's worried about you," she says, and she steps inside the shuttle, to Inara and Tim, who welcome her. She lies down too, one of Tim's hand in hers. She looks at Jason before singing with Inara._

 _Inara looks up too, then. He… doesn't know what he wants. To sleep. Tim to be okay. Serenity to be okay. She holds out a hand, and Tim looks above his shoulder then._

 _What the hell, he thinks._

 _When he sits on the bed, his side just close enough from Inara's to feel her warmth, Tim uses his thighs as a pillow._

 _He doesn't realize until long after that not once that day, that month, that year, he thought about finding their way back._

 _  
*_

 _He's cutting up green beans –fresh ones, not the kind they buy in cans more often than not. They have gotten paid half in fresh goods, this time. Not too bad, he thinks. The repetitive task helps with the hangover of this time, too. He's no fancy cook like Alfred, but he can put things together and make it good. There are potatoes and lard and onions, enough to make a soup with the beans and keep a lot of it frozen for later; but not too much later, because the freezer stinks, even after having been dosed in bleach twice, and the food kept in it for too long tends to pick up the taste of the scent._

 _A laugh makes him turns his attention to the corner where Kaylee, River and Tim are playing some address game with a ball and stars of metal which name he never caught on. It had turned into a duel between Tim and River at some point while he wasn't looking. Kaylee drops the ball and River's and Tim's hands shoots toward the metal scraps, almost too fast to be seen._

 _It's a tie. And a tie again. Tim's grinning._

 _It's a good day.  
_

*

III.

He didn't knew where he was. He wasn't thinking straight, wasn't even he was thinking at all, everything too jumbled and twisted and it smelled like Inara's tea in butter and there were voices and touch. _Tim_ , he thought. And he went back under.

He opened his eyes the next time. That was what they told him, after. He didn't remember.

When he could think, finally, he thought that the job had gone wrong. It was a strange thought, a bubble floating between– he didn't even know. He felt too light, too heavy, too cold, too warm. The stupid job must have gone really wrong. He couldn't remember. He slept.

"Jay." It was a little more than a whisper, a little throaty, croaking whisper, as if the person talking hadn't done so in a long time. "Jay." It was his name but no-one on the ship used it, not like that.

Jason opened his eyes, blinked in the too harsh lights –but they weren't, not really. It was just light after keeping his eyes shut for too long.

"Jay," again. It sounded closer, just a bit, and he turned his head, wondering who–

"Tim," he wanted to say, but all that came out was a raspy sigh. Simon came in, had probably been waiting outside, and started talking –Jason wasn't listening to him, for a change. He was looking at Tim. Tim who was frowning, and looked worried, and was very much there and had been talking and–

And it was like a switch had been flipped, and suddenly it wasn't Tim _Tim_ anymore, but Tim the Tim Jason saw every day, every hour since he broke into a facility and found a teen with a shaved head strapped to a chair.

"Tim," he wanted to say, again, and he struggled to sit upright, to reach to him, to touch him but Simon was in the way, and it fucking _hurt_ and the doc was trying to restrain him–

Tim cocked his head to the side and Inara took his hand to lead him out, where Jason couldn't follow.

*

Simon looked pissed when Jason got out from his bunk to limp to the main room, but the doc had to know by now that Jay rarely listened to him concerning his health and hated being told what he had to do.

He hadn't seen Tim since he got back to the world of the livings, two days ago. He worried about him –Tim still couldn't sleep if Jason wasn't around, unless what he had seen, two days ago, that flicker, had made that change. Simon had remained tight-lipped about Tim and the obvious changes in behavior, had tried his best for the topic to go back to Jason's state and health and what he was not to do.

Jason grabbed some water and carefully lowered himself to one beaten up couch that had replaced another beaten up couch in the corner. He hadn't seen anyone yet. He wanted to see Mal, to know how the job had turned out –try as he might he couldn't get further than getting the target in his scope. Simon had said something like amnesia-related trauma was to be expected, when Jason had mentioned it. It didn't make it any easier on Jason. The doc had probably saved his life, too.

He wanted to see Tim, but crawling in the passageways he and River liked to roam through sounded like the worst idea he could have right now.

He didn't realize he had dozed off until he heard someone calling out. "-son? Jason. You should be laying down." Zoë. Zoë, out of arm's reach and frowning and he knew the last time he had seen her he–. He had what? The confusion must have showed, because she stepped closer and crossed her arms, an apple in one hand, a shadow of smile dancing on her lips.

"You look better than when I saw you last. Nice shot." She sounded slightly impressed. Or maybe it was only Jason's wistful imagination.

"The job?" he asked.

She sat down, facing him, and started to cut her apple. "Done and payed." The smile disappeared, and she shifted, her elbows on her knees. "Never do that again. There's been enough deaths."

Before he could ask what she was talking about – _the job, must have been it, what did I do this time?_ – Kaylee and Tim entered the room. Jason tried to sit up. Tim– his eyes, they were clearer somehow, not staring but focused and they were focused on him, and seeing him and– Jason didn't even react at the pain of Tim pressing against him, at Tim's arms around him. He reciprocated the hug, looking up at the two women.

Kaylee was smiling. "He's been so worried about you! We couldn't get him off your side!"

That wasn't what he wanted to know, what he needed to hear. Zoë seemed to get it. "He's been like that since Simon and I got your bleeding hide here. You'll have to talk to him–" but Jason wasn't listening there and now either.

"Tim?"

He felt the younger man nod against his shoulder.

"Do you know... d'you know who I am?"

"Jay," was whispered against his neck as Tim shifted. "Jay," he repeated. Jason held on tighter.

They were here to stay. They'd keep flying.

  
*  
end


End file.
